MTV is really taking the plunge into fantasy, as it has greenlit a ten-episode first season order for Shannara. The show will be based on the series of fantasy novels by Terry Brooks, reworked a lot of J.R.R. Tolkein’s ideas, setting the fantasy world as the post-nuclear future of Earth. The novels take place thousands of years after apocalyptic wars mutated mankind into elves and dwarves, and changed the geographic layout of our planet.

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The Sword of Shannara, from author Terry Brooks, is kind of a cold-war revision of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ideas. The book features all the fantasy trappings of Tolkien’s novels — so much so that critics dinged Brooks for rampant borrowing — but gives it all a nuclear origin, as the novels take place thousands of years after apocalyptic wars mutated mankind into elves and dwarves, and changed the geographic layout of Earth.

The book was also very successful, and it spawned two direct sequels and ultimately became the thing that dominates Brooks’ career — he’s got more Shannara books set for 2014 and 2015, almost 40 years after the publication of his first. With all the interest in YA and fantasy novel properties from studios since The Lord of the Rings was a success, it is possibly only the very Tolkien-lite characteristics of Shannara that have kept the books from being adapted. Not that people haven’t tried, as producers who started working with the rights in 2007 have now hit pay dirt.

MTV is now developing Shannara, a TV series, with Jon Favreau signed to direct the pilot. Read More »